The secret judge has reviewed all the Day 1 entries and here is what he has to say:

capescafe

Interesting idea. I see the Sitepoint logo and backslash. It doesn't create a well-composed photo though, when looked at overall. At a glance, to someone without prior knowledge of the Sitepoint logo, the objects just look randomly placed.

For this competition I'd prefer a more organic and less abstract approach.

Datura

Fantastic composition skills, as expected from Datura.

Lovely visual balance; The items arranged in a triangle between the card, the handle of the magnifying glass, and the tape on the left side. The story of sending 4th of July via Express Mail is well expressed. Maybe less emphasis on "office supplies".

The photo is slightly blurry, perhaps because of a slow shutterspeed. You might consider resting down the camera of something sturdy, like a chair or on the table, or use brighter light so you can get away with a flaster shutterspeed.

emeryswanson

Fun idea, albeit a little gimmicky. For this competition I'd prefer a more organic and less abstract approach; Something that looks as though it might be found in real life, but looking better than real life.

The crop is a little tight though, making the photo look choked up. Consider shooting from further away. Across the street, maybe. Or from the end of the parking lot.

jcwacky

"A webdesigner at work," clever idea there.

The items look a little too free-floating. Play with your composition, consider overlapping elements, and shooting a tighter angle to crop out all the empty space on the desk.

I love the use of a directional lightting, but try to get a more even lighting across your photo. Some areas on the left side are going too dark in relation to everything else.

KamiQuasi

Lovely idea of a nighttime shot to bring out the glowing signs.

Work on framing your photograph. Lower your angle slightly, and point a little more to your right, so you get that building filling up your entire frame.

kaybee57

Impressive collection of there, kaybee57.

A little off the topic of office supplies.

If you position yourself more directly in front of the bookcase, you'd be able to keep your lines straighter throughout the whole frame.

ParkinT

Good going, ParkinT. Good exposure, photo is on-topic. Loving the clouds in the window.

Consider the time of day you shoot, some parts of the day offer far better lighting than others. It can make something that would look dull or plain ordinarily, suddenly become stunning.

If you'd done this at sunset, for instance, with those orange clouds reflecting in the windows.

pixelfuze

Evening shot with a longer exposure. It looks beautiful. I'm loving the glowing signs and that highlight off the front pillar.

Work on keeping your vertical lines and horizon straight. That can be corrected in an image editor, but best of all is to line them up as best you can while shooting.

sbarrat

Good experimentation with shooting angle.

The idea of "office suppies" is lost though, as the Ctrl key becomes the dominant idea of the photograph.

Play with a composition from scratch, rather than shooting what's already there.

sGrossman

Clearly this is a busy office!

The overall image looks a little dull though. Perhaps that is the lighting, the pop-up flash isn't doing you any favours. I'd prefer a composition set up from scratch. You can pile it on the same way to give the idea of "busy office", but you'd also have the freedom to move around and shoot from different directions to find what looks best.

simonnz

Great! I like this a lot. Nice use of a wide-angle to give us that enormous field of view, and a very interesting subject that I find myself just staring into the photo to see all there is to see. Good going, keeping your vertical lines straight.

Work on your colour balance. You can adjust that in camera or with an image editor afterward.

Photo is on-topic, and good focus on the subjects. I'd love to see you try a more real-world-looking composition.

wenchbabe

Interesting shadows. Is this Pizza Hut afterhours?

This photo makes me think of an airport more than a restaurant for some reason. Try shooting from different sides of the room. Maybe get more of the counter in, or food, or people eating, or dishes and wares. Elements like that will help add to communication of the idea that, "This is a place where people eat."

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My favourites are Datura and simonnz. It's difficult to compare their two photos, as the topics are like comparing apples to bananas. Datura has outstanding compositional skills.

But today's prize goes to simonnz for his photo skills. Long depth of field, good sharpness throughout, and nice angle. Whether he shot this with a point and shooter or SLR, I think he can benefit a lot from the knowledge in the Photography for the Web book. I'm hoping he keeps at it, continues practicing, and hones what he already can do.

Alexa12345
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2010-07-13T22:12:08Z —
#2

I also say that the pictures are beautiful, but i see that mostly they miss the originality, no offense for those who took its. To win a contest you have to have vision, to see beyond of what is given.

Congrats, simonnz. For changing the color balance, I go into Adobe Camera Raw (Lightroom would also work for this), which can work with jpgs (I'm not sure if Canon's software works with jpgs, and I have no idea about Nikon), though RAW is preferred.

In Adobe Camera Raw, there are settings for white balance - for indoors I usually go with tungsten or fluorescent. RAW will give you further tweaking ability to get an exact value, though I normally do not tweak that far. In newer versions, there is also a white balance dropper - select a color that is supposed to be a neutral gray and it will select the proper white balance from there.

johnblack11
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2010-07-18T05:04:40Z —
#11

This was really nice, awesome, I really like these, I think that many people were enjoying this competition, great idea, and this information given by you is really nice, I hope that many people really like these information.

simonnz
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2010-07-07T02:54:34Z —
#12

Thanks to everybody for comments and are really surprised as I think the comment was made about the color balance and I do agree.

What I do ask is how would I change this? as the photo was actually way more orange and I did adjust the balance but obvioulsy not right, I tried to get it looking more like what it looks like, should I have left it as shot? what is wrong with the balance? I really would love to know and I am sure others would too.

I entered this photo because the subject was right and i liked the composition.

THANKS AGAIN and look forward to reading the book:):)

Datura
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2010-07-07T01:21:42Z —
#13

A yah, thanks to the mystery judge

capescafe
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2010-07-06T21:47:20Z —
#14

Yes, really nice photo simonnz. I love sushi! Makes me want to get some, but I think I've spent too much on sushi already this month. ;o) Anyways...I really like the perspective in your photo. Really nice. I've got a lot to learn. I'm looking forward now to getting the new SitePoint book.

dusterbed
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2010-07-06T21:06:43Z —
#15

Thank you Raffles!

Datura
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2010-07-06T23:36:38Z —
#16

Congratulations simonnz, I picked your photograph also as my favorite. Great angles and conveys the idea really well

Raffles
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2010-07-06T20:55:49Z —
#17

The images are in this thread. I'm glad simonnz's was picked, it was my favourite too, mostly because of the perspective.